Pro-Choice Organizing in “The Equality State”
Derailing attacks on reproductive rights in Wyoming
Wyoming’s small but powerful prochoice community is doing its best to make the state live up to its nickname. Known as the “Equality State,” Wyoming was the first state in the nation to grant women the right to vote, to serve on juries and to hold public office. In keeping with this early tradition of respect for women’s rights, pro-choice advocates have defeated every legislative attack on reproductive choice since 1990. We beat back two such attacks in the 2011 legislative session alone: House Bill 118, requiring that abortion providers offer women an ultrasound image of their “unborn child” in advance of scheduling an abortion and lecture them on “fetal pain,” and House Bill 251, a modified version of the same law. In a state with a less than 25 percent Democratic minority in both House and Senate, defeating these bills was no small task.
Don’t get me wrong, Wyoming still has plenty of anti-choice laws on the books—NARAL’s national office gives it a D+ grade for the burdens it imposes on access to reproductive healthcare. As in many states, we have laws limiting abortion access for poor women and for young women, and 96 percent of Wyoming’s counties have no abortion provider at all. But the last anti-choice bill to be signed into law in Wyoming was its onerous parental notification and consent requirement in 1989.
Since then, the Wyoming legislature has considered bills limiting reproductive rights in 20 of the last 24 years. Pro-choice advocates have battled so-called “Human Life Protection Act” bills, “partial-birth” abortion bans, “informed consent” bills mandating 24 and 48-hour waiting periods, reporting requirements and other measures to discourage women from seeking abortions. We have successfully trounced a host of proposed “fetal personhood” initiatives—laws classifying the fetus as an additional victim in violent crimes committed against pregnant women—as well as measures permitting prosecution of women who use drugs for “unborn child” abuse.
Every victory has been hard won. How do pro-choice advocates work this magic year after year? Our organizing success derives from our ability to build grassroots alliances and leverage personal relationships in a vast, sparsely-populated state where personal connections are paramount, including those among activists, everyday people and citizen legislators.
A small but mighty coalition
The 1989 US Supreme Court decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services galvanized pro-choice activists across the nation, including Wyoming. In Webster, the Court upheld provisions of a Missouri statute prohibiting the use of “public facilities or personnel” to perform abortions and imposing viability-testing requirements on physicians treating women 20 weeks or more into their pregnancies. For the first time in the 16 years since the Court decided Roe v. Wade, only a minority of justices on the Court had voted to reaffirm Roe’s basic framework.
The Wyoming National Organization for Women (NOW) had a few hundred dollars in its checking account, the local National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) affiliate had a few hundred names on its mailing list but wasn’t very active, and members of the Wyoming American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offered help. We pooled resources and began organizing marches, putting a new pro-choice coalition together and sending out coalition newsletters several times a year. Over time, we built a successful alliance of activists willing and able to speak out on pro-choice issues and engage local candidates and elected officials. Our informal pro-choice coalition grew to include NARAL Pro-Choice Wyoming, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Wyoming ACLU and Wyoming NOW. My mantra is “small but mighty:” NARAL Pro-Choice Wyoming may be a small organization, but we are living proof that a small and committed group of activists can have a powerful impact on legislative outcomes, especially in a state like ours.
Far apart but connected
Locals describe Wyoming as “one town with one, long road.” With just 563,626 inhabitants, Wyoming is the least populous state in the country and also the tenth largest. It’s a full eight-hour drive from the southeast to northwest corners of the state. Our state legislature convenes 40 days per year in even-numbered years and just 20 days in odd-numbered years. The legislative session takes place during the worst winter months, historically the season when rancher-legislators were freed from daily tasks and could travel to Cheyenne. Road closures are common; road-closing weather has hit the state every month of the year. Even the 45- mile drive between our office in Laramie and the Capitol building in Cheyenne is frequently impassable. These conditions create unique challenges and opportunities for organizing.
For example, while geographic challenges make it difficult for constituents to get to Cheyenne, they also make it hard for the legislators to get out of Cheyenne. Legislators who live within an hour or two of the Capitol try to get home on weekends, but those who don’t generally stay in town for most of the session. This makes them more likely to read their constituents’ emails, take phone calls and meet one-onone with activists at legislative receptions and other events.
Similarly, Wyoming’s small population creates opportunities for activists to capitalize on personal relationships, with legislators and with each other. When I move to Wyoming as a high school junior I was stunned to discover that everyone seemed to know everybody else. Now the state’s six-degrees-of-separation culture seems normal to me–and useful. When you know you may well see someone again around the next bend, you want that person to be a friend, or at least not an enemy.
Our legislators know this too. Each of the state legislature’s house districts contains only about 8,300 residents. Each senate district has just 16,500 residents. The high constituent to representative ratio means that candidates for office can, and in many cases do, go to every door in their districts to seek support and get to know their constituents personally. Constituents and activists can use these relationships to impact the way their legislators view pro-choice issues.
At the height of organizing against an earlier “ultrasound” bill in 2009, NARAL Pro-Choice Wyoming board member Lorraine Saulino-Klein emailed members of the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee to contest the medical assumptions of the bill. “I’ve been a nurse for 38 years,” she wrote, “and I can’t read an ultrasound. It is hard to make out an early term ultrasound [even] when a doctor or highly trained technician is telling you what you are looking at. What makes anyone think a non-medically trained person could get anything out of looking at an ultrasound is beyond me.” The committee chair referred to this email during the hearing. Episcopal clergyman Reverend Tim Solon testified that “the seven times the word ‘child’ is used makes the bill an establishment of religion in that it codifies a religious doctrine. There [are] a wide variety of teachings about when the conception of a human being becomes...a person.” On the House floor and in committee hearings, Republican Representative Sue Wallis shared her story of how she chose an abortion in order to better care for her existing children.The committee chair referred to Saulino-Klein’s email in the course of hearings on the ultimately defeated bill. The basic concept of freedom underlying reproductive choice is not hard to grasp, especially when offered
by involved and articulate pro-choice advocates.
Staying low-tech and personal
Some of our strategies are decidedly low-tech in an increasingly high-tech world, but they get results. If volunteers don’t use the internet, we get on the telephone with updates, requests and a word of thanks. Those volunteers don’t hesitate to pick up the phone themselves and call their legislators. We are also willing to hit the road. NARAL Pro-Choice Wyoming used road trips with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and the Abortion Access Project to expand women’s health services in Wyoming and Colorado. Our first trip took us through Fort Collins, Colorado, and Caspar, Jackson and Laramie, Wyoming over the course of four days. This entailed as much as seven hours of driving to get to one cocktail party, with another seven hours the next day for the next meet-and-greet—with no guarantee that anybody would even show up at our events. The road trip allowed us to connect with doctors, clinicians, political activists, elected officials, major donors, students and others who continue to help us with our work–one city councilwoman ultimately joined our board of directors!
A measure of hope
Wyoming’s 2011 legislative session brought other regressive social legislation to the fore, too. Progressive activists narrowly defeated an anti-gay “validity of marriages” bill, which defined valid marriage as between a man and a woman, as well as a proposed amendment to the state constitution denying recognition of gay marriages. Wyoming Equality and Wyoming ACLU worked hard on these issues with many thoughtful legislators, including Republicans. Some of our Republican legislators oppose any kind of government interference with personal freedoms, whether these concern reproductive freedom, same-sex marriage or government regulation of guns. And as with pro-choice
organizing, personal relationships influenced the result. Republican legislators have daughters and wives, as well as gay family members, friends and constituents who were targeted by regressive social bills. The experiences of Wyoming activists should provide a measure of hope to organizers everywhere. Don’t despair. If we can organize in a conservative state like Wyoming, so can you. Onward and upward, fellow organizers!
